When his
merits come to be recognised and appreciated, and especially if he
obtains disciples, the intellectual infirmity soon becomes complicated
with a moral one. The natural result of the position is a gigantic
self-confidence, not to say self-conceit. That of M. Comte is colossal.
Except here and there in an entirely self-taught thinker, who has no
high standard with which to compare himself, we have met with nothing
approaching to it. As his thoughts grew more extravagant, his
self-confidence grew more outrageous. The height it ultimately attained
must be seen, in his writings, to be believed.
The other circumstance of a personal nature which it is impossible not
to notice, because M. Comte is perpetually referring to it as the origin
of the great superiority which he ascribes to his later as compared with
his earlier speculations, is the "moral regeneration" which he underwent
from "une angelique influence" and "une incomparable passion privee." He
formed a passionate attachment to a lady whom he describes as uniting
everything which is morally with much that is intellectually admirable,
and his relation to whom, besides the direct influence of her character
upon his own, gave him an insight into the true sources of human
happiness, which changed his whole conception of life.
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